Rinse and Repeat 4: Murphy's Law Applies to Colds
by Chameleon2
Summary: Basically, this is the mandatory hypothermia fic. During a suspect hunt, Ressler does another one of his 'run and jump in after them' actions, but this time it's winter and it's a very bad idea.


**Murphy's Law Applies to Colds**

A/N This is basically ye olde hypothermia/ angst & hurt/comfort / fever sex fic

Lizzie had a cold. Or rather, it was the herald of a cold, that stuffy feeling in the head and sore throat that might or might not develop into a full blown sinusitis or a sniffling, wet-eyed snot-fest with a blinding headache and achy joints.

Ressler had a cold as well, or perhaps his had already upgraded to a flu, because he was a bit flushed and she thought he might be running a temperature.

At the moment, she hated him. If there was one thing she hated, it was men who didn't acknowledge that they were sick, ignored advice to stay in bed in the morning, went to work anyway, were completely useless all day and came back sick as a dog in the evening. Ressler wasn't sick as a dog yet, but he showed all the signs of getting there, and he was irritable because a. he probably felt like shit and b. she'd told him, rather soundly, that she thought he was an idiot for getting into the car with her instead of staying home with a hot water bottle and a mug of grog. Like all men, Ressler did not like to be told he was an idiot, especially when he was being one, and he showed this by reverting back to the close-mouthed, uptight dick he'd been when she first got to know him.

Lizzie, in turn, was irritable because a. she wasn't feeling 100% and chasing a suspect through the mountains in a rental car was the last thing she wanted to be doing right now—the first thing being staying home with a hot water bottle and a mug of grog—and b. she could have been sitting here with Louanne, who hadn't shown any signs of infection, and who at least would have opened her mouth to chat once in a while.

The car had been silent for the last 53 minutes—that was when they'd lost the thready radio signal and the country music they had both loathed but had both been too stubborn to turn off had finally dissolved into solid static. The only sounds they made were snuffing or a repressed cough, and it was slowly but certainly getting on her nerves.

To her surprise it was Ressler who broke the silence first, and with a peace offering, no less: he pulled a package of Halls cough drops out of a pocket and offered it to her. "Want one?"

"God, yes." She didn't want to take her eyes from the icy road, though. There was yet another bridge coming up, and the last time she'd almost slid into the fast-running stream because even with snow tyres she could hardly find any purchase on the slippery wood.

Ressler unpacked one for her and dropped it in her hand. She could tell that he desperately wanted to take the wheel, but he'd already been driving for six hours when she had all but hauled him out of his seat three hours ago, and he'd spent most of the time she'd been driving in a sulky doze, leaning his flushed face against the cold window.

She suckled on her drop, feeling it soothe the fish hooks in her throat, cleared her throat and offered, "How're you feeling?"

"Fine." He paused. "How about you?"

"The same as you."

She could feel his stare on her face, and then he laughed. "Like crap, then."

Lizzie chuckled weakly as she gingerly, carefully steered the big SUV over an ice-rink-like bridge. "Yeah, that sounds about accurate." She blinked grainy eyes as a smattering of snow flakes landed on the window. Great, that was all that had been missing, snow. "We should not have taken this assignment," she muttered tiredly. "We should've given it to the local PD."

"What PD?" Ressler asked. "Bumfuck Nowhere PD? They have one Sherrif and that's the end of it. They can't handle a man like Buchanan."

"And we can? I don't know about you, but I have enough trouble getting enough oxygen sitting here in this car, let alone when I'm chasing someone through the snow."

He lifted the corner of his mouth. "Then you should've stayed in bed this morning."

"I wanted to!" she snapped back. The road was making yet another turn, and in a few minutes they were sure to meet the stream again, as well. The snow flakes were breeding, too; the smattering had grown to a fully fledged fall. "I wasn't kidding when I said I thought we should let someone else handle it. I wasn't…"

"Shh!" Ressler hissed, holding up his hand, and she almost hit him in the eye, but then he pointed and said, "Look! Look, that's him, that's the blue convertible!"

Dear sweet merciful god, it was. Lizzie hit the gas, and a few seconds later she could even confirm the license plate—it was Buchanan all right. Unfortunately, Buchanan had noticed them as well, and made a run for it.

"Faster!" Ressler urged, and Lizzie sped up a little bit more. The road was like pure ice, though, and with every turn she could feel the wheels slipping a little. "For god's sake, Keen, step on it or we'll lose him!"

"Do you want to end up splattered against a tree?" she snarled back. "I'm going as fast as I dare."

"Then grow some balls and go faster!"

Lizzie gritted her teeth, but pressed her foot down and clawed her fingers into the steering wheel as the car roared up the winding road.

The convertible Mercedes didn't have snow tyres. Buchanan was going as fast as he could—he had balls—and that was too fast for this road. When he came out of his turn and onto the bridge, his car went into a spin, and Lizzie's SUV slammed into its side and sent it crashing into the railing. The crash wasn't hard enough to inflate the airbags, but Lizzie nevertheless felt stunned by the impact and by the adrenaline produced by driving that fast on such a traitorous rode. She groggily shook her head, still clutching the wheel with her hands.

Ressler was more resilient; he was out of the car in a heartbeat and ran out to the convertible, gun drawn and voice ringing out, "Stop! FBI! Put your hands where I can…"

Buchanan, obviously, did not stop, nor put his hands where Ressler could see them. He had crawled out of the car and ran out onto the bridge, holding his arm.

Ressler followed him. He was very, very good at running very, very fast. It didn't go quite that well on the icy wood of the bridge, but he was like a Shepard dog and he was gaining on Buchanan quickly.

Buchanan had no qualms abducting and raping young children, but he wasn't the kind of man who'd initiate a heroic standoff. He cast a panicked glance over his shoulder and grabbed hold of the railing.

Lizzie had a powerful flashback to when she'd only just joined the Post Office, to a similar car crash, that ended with a little girl with her name being kidnapped and towed off by boat.

She shouldered open her door.

"Ressler! Wait! No!" Surely no one would even consider escaping that way. In this weather, it was nothing less than suicide.

But to her astonishment, Buchanan really was that dumb, or that desperate, and he vaulted over the railing and into the churning stream below. And to her horrified stupefaction, Ressler jumped in right after him.

"RESSLER!"

She flew to the railing and desperately searched the water for his body, but it was a black, frothy mass and she could see nothing.

_The current must be killer, he's probably already pulled downstream._ She ran to the other railing, and yes, there they were, two small figures rapidly growing even smaller as the river towed them away.

For a few seconds, she didn't know what to do. Her breath plumed around her in the frosty air. The river beneath her only hadn't frozen over because the current ran too fast and couldn't be more than 33 degrees. Ressler wouldn't last for five minutes. Obviously, he had come to the same conclusion. He was still swimming, trying to make his way to the bank on the right side.

Lizzie closed her eyes, mind racing as she tried to remember how the road had wound back and forth over the stream. Could she intercept him, if she drove back? Yes, she thought she could. Buchanan's fate, she decided, was unimportant for the moment. She ran back to the car, sliding on the frosty ground, and threw herself behind the wheel. The SUV made a pathetic mewling sound when she pulled it away from the damaged convertible, but she ignored it and floored the gas to make a tyre-screeching U-turn.

It was two full loops of road back, she thought. If she managed to get there before the river dragged him further downstream, she might still reach him before he was frozen solid.

_And then what? How close is the closest town?_ She glanced at the GPS and saw that the nearest town, some hole in the ground—or rather, up the mountain—named Binchley, was only four miles away. The next moment she skidded through a bend in the road and almost lost power over the wheel, but she put her foot down and accelerated, and the car remained on the road. She crossed the first bridge and turned again, hardly daring to search the stream below for a sign of life. The second bridge was already in sight when she noticed a narrow, partially overgrown path running along the stream, and without hesitation she drove the SUV into the underbrush. She was forced to park rather abruptly when a fallen tree barred her way and was out of the car before the motor had died down.

Luckily, the thorn bushes on the bank had all died in the frost. Brambles grew everywhere, but their stems were brittle as glass and broke the moment she ran through them. It took her only a couple of minutes to make her struggling way to the water, but every second felt like a century.

How long was it since he'd jumped in? Five minutes? Ten?

"Ressler!" she screamed, desperately scanning the black water. Snow flakes flew into her eyes and she wiped them away furiously. "RESSLER!"

There he was! No, that wasn't Ressler, it was Buchanan. He was also trying to make his way to the shore, his movements slow, desperate and failing—but there, much closer, yes, that was Ressler!

Lizzie regarded the river, trying to determine how deep it was. Not very deep, she thought; despite the frothy ripples she could see the stones on the bottom. Ressler's head came up when she screamed his name again; he weakly kicked his legs and wound up another few yards closer to the shore, but he had almost reached her by now, and he still wasn't close enough. Taking a deep breath, Lizzie threw off her coat and stepped into the stream.

Immediately, her legs went completely numb. The water only barely reached to her calves this close to the river bank, but with each step it became deeper, and it was so cold it felt as if she were stabbed by knives before her flesh became senseless.

Ressler pumped his legs and arms one last, desperate time, and with one more step that brought the water to her knees, Lizzie reached out and grabbed his hand. It was like touching ice, and all feeling fled from her fingers, but she had him.

_Eureka!_

She hauled with all her might, hoping her dead fingers wouldn't let go of him. She couldn't feel the pressure of his grip, even though she could see the death hold of their hands. Well, as long as she could get him out of the water, it was fine; she could worry about frostbite later. One more step backwards, back to the shore. Another. The water receded, and she began to shiver violently as the freezing air blew against her sopping jeans. Ressler knees hit the pebbly ground underwater. He was holding on as best as he could, but it was as if she was hauling in a particularly big and unresponsive fish.

"Come on," she panted at him, "get up. Get up! Get up, Don, move your feet." She dragged him out a few feet further, and then her left foot got stuck in the uneven ground, her ankle twisted with a soft crunching pop she felt more than she heard, and she fell backwards into the bushes.

"Aaagh! God _damn_ it!"

Ressler flopped down between her knees, his own legs still in the water. He was trying to crawl out completely, but all he managed was to paw weakly at the ground. He retched, and a stream of water ran out of his mouth. At least he was breathing, but it went in weird, uneven gasps and hitches.

_He's freezing. _Lizzie grabbed both of his wrists and yanked. Her ankle throbbed dully, but her legs were still mostly numb with cold, and he slid up the slope another couple of feet. Ice almost immediately began to form on his hair and lashes. His face was fishbelly white, and his lips and the thin skin beneath his eyes were a disturbing bluish hue. He was conscious, but his eyes were glassy and dilated, and while Lizzie was shivering so badly she could hardly get the buttons of his shirt undone, Ressler's body remained perfectly still apart from the occasional tremor and gasping breath.

She pulled him to a sitting position, gathered her coat. "Don!" she said, tearing at his sodden shirt, already rimmed with ice, "Don, talk to me. Stay with me. Can you hear me? Can you understand me at all?" The shirt went down, and she covered him up with her coat, starting rubbing at his chest. "God damn it, you stupid, stupid, stupid _man_, fuck you, talk to me!" His eyes closed, and she hit him, hard, with the flat of her hand. His eyes shot open again, unfocused and confused, and she hit him again on his other cheek. "Talk to me! Talk to me! Talk to me, you fucking asshole!" She started slapping his chest as well, anything to get him warm again. She was so busy smacking him she almost missed it when he raised his hands to fend her off.

"S-stop hitting m-me," he stammered. He started to shiver violently, body curling up into foetal position in order to preserve heat.

"Oh thank god." She spread out the coat a little more securely and kept rubbing at him. She should really call for help, but for the moment she didn't dare stop warming him until he was a little more responsive. And if 'warming him up' also meant 'slapping him silly', well, who was to blame her? "Keep your eyes open, Donnie, talk to me. Talk to me, damn it, you bastard, talk to me."

He stuttered something, but he was shaking so hard she couldn't make out a single word. Still, it was a response, and she was so grateful to hear it she hugged him fiercely before pressing her now burning hands against his cheeks, cupping his ears. He was so cold she swore she could feel the tips of his ears melt against her fingers.

"I've got to get you into the car," she said. "And I've got to call for help." That first, she decided. Thankfully, her phone showed two bars, and 911 put her through to a nasal operator within two rings.

Lizzie quickly stated her name and profession, the nature of the incident—_my partner had a total mental meltdown and jumped into the nearest stream in pursuit of an equally moronic suspect—_gave her position as accurately as she was aware of it—two bridges down from the crashed convertible and off to the side—and was told that an ambulance would reach her in roughly ten minutes.

"Ma'am, do you have any means to get your partner covered up and inside?" the operator asked.

"Yes," Lizzie said, chafing Ressler's belly through her coat with her free hand. "We're close to the car. His coat's still inside."

"Ok," the woman said. "Try to get him inside and turn on the heat. Don't worry about his extremities, they'll take care of themselves. Just make sure his chest and abdomen…"

"I know," Lizzie snapped. "I have to go now." She jammed the phone back into her pocket and grabbed Ressler's arm. "Come on."

"Where're we going?" he mumbled.

"To the car. I saw a plaid in the backseat, and you—" she broke off with a yell of pain as she put her weight on her left foot, went down on one knee.

"W-what is it?" Ressler asked haltingly. "Are you h-hurt?"

"I sprained my freaking ankle." She tried again, grimacing. Her legs were still so numb with cold she hadn't even noticed the lances of agony shooting through her foot, but standing on it, let alone walking on it, was extremely painful. When she heard they'd be travelling the mountains she'd donned sensible hiking boots and her ankle had some support from the thick leather shoe, and she didn't think she'd broken anything, but still, any pressure on it was agony.

Chances of Ressler swooping her up in his arms, however, were exceedingly slim. He could hardly stand up on his own.

Lizzie clenched her jaws together. "Ok," she said, shoving her shoulder into his icy armpit. "I can't use my left leg. Not much, anyway. So I need you to prop me up when I put that foot down. Ok?"

"Sure," he said faintly. But apparently her words had penetrated his cold-addled mind after all, because after a few faltering and agonizing steps they found some kind of rhythm supporting one another as they made it up the slope. By the time they reached the car, Lizzie was dizzy with pain, but no longer cold, even though the water still streaming out of Ressler's jeans had drenched her entire left side. Ressler was still shaking so hard he could be used as the source of a Power Plate, but after a while his footing had become surer, and the exercise seemed to have woken him up a little.

The car was cold; she'd left the door open after her mad dash to the stream. But it was dry, apart from a few stray flakes of snow that had drifted in, and once she'd gotten Ressler into the passenger seat, the doors closed and the heating on at full blast, it warmed up pretty quickly.

Lizzie helped Ressler into his own coat, which he could actually wear, unlike her own, which she wrapped around herself, and further covered him up with the plaid she'd found in the back seat. She really wanted to get back onto the road, but she couldn't operate the pedals with her stiffening foot.

Well, it wasn't as if they were hard to find. They weren't parked that far from the road.

She turned to her idiot of a partner. The idiot still had the tendency to pull his knees up to his chest and curl into a quivering ball, and his lips were still blue, but he had the presence of mind to gaze out of the window and ask, "What h-happened t-to Buchanan?"

"I don't know, and I don't care."

"If he esc-c-c-"

"He won't. He's got no one to pull him out." _Unlike you. Moron._ God, she was so mad at him. What if she hadn't reached him in time?

But when he fell silent apart from the chattering of his teeth she took pity on him, took one of the hands he was holding in front of the blower between her palms and started chafing some warmth into it. Having her rub it seemed to hurt him—pins and needles, probably. She kept doing it anyway and nudged him awake when he started to drift off. "No. Stay with me. You can sleep when you're warmed up and safe in a bed somewhere."

"I'm tired."

"Then you shouldn't jump into freezing water."

That drew a tiny smile from him. "Yeah. T-t-thanks, by the way. For g-getting me out."

"Yeah," Lizzie said. "You're welcome."

It didn't take long before she heard a siren in the distance, just as the car was growing nice and warm. The beat-up van that halted at the path she had taken to the stream did not look much like an ambulance, though. It was white, and it had a red cross painted on the side, but it had no lights and the three men and the woman who came out of it didn't wear any kind of uniform. They took out a couple of bags and, of all things, a portable ice box, and made their way down to the SUV.

"Hello there!" a young man said cheerfully, as Lizzie got out of the car and stood shivering in the wind. "Are you Liz Keen?"

"Yeah. You the cavalry?"

He laughed. He couldn't be much older than twenty-two, had very round, innocent-looking eyes, a shock of dark blonde curls and was wearing a knitted hat with a reindeer pattern on it. "Yes. My name's Flight, Jack Flight. I'm a paramedic. This is Peter Samson," A thickset man in his early fifties, "Karen Mash," a matronly woman with a wide mouth and russet hair, "her husband Steve. They just have a lot of experience fishing folks out of the water and getting them warmed up again."

For a moment she wondered if they expected her to shake hands, but then Karen noticed her wet jeans and said, "Did you get into the water, too? Sweetheart, let's get you out of those wet pants. Where's your partner? He was the one who fell in, right? How long was he in the water?"

"About ten minutes, I think. And he didn't fall, he jumped." The moment she let the words out of her mouth she felt guilty—Ressler wasn't crazy nor suicidal, he was just insanely committed. "I sprained my ankle," she added quickly. "Could you help me with my shoes?"

"Of course, of course," Karen said. "Dear lord, you're soaked as well underneath that coat. Here, let me take that, and now quickly put this on." She handed Lizzie a thick sweater from her box, and the moment she put it on she couldn't help moaning aloud at the sheer ecstasy of it. The sweater was WARM. Not just thick and soft, but actually heated. The bliss of that heat carried her through the pain of having her swelling ankle extracted from her boot, and the unpleasant motion of peeling off her pants and panties.

"Don't worry about the boys," Karen said, handing her a similarly warmed pair of sweat pants to put on. "They won't peek." Indeed, 'the boys' were similarly occupied getting Ressler out of his sodden clothes and into heated clothing as well. He was still shivering, but they were prodding him towards their van with promises of hot tea. "There you go. Let me get you back into the car—oi, Steve, dear, I'll take care of Liz here. She can't drive on her own. Does he," she nodded at Ressler, "need a hospital?"

The man, Steve, a rugged individual with a full beard and soft, friendly eyes behind thick glasses, shook his head. "I was thinking about dropping them off at Beatrice's. He's fully responsive and alert, just cold." He grinned, showing white teeth in the bushy beard. "A good night's sleep at B's and a gallon of tea should be enough to help him through the night. How 'bout Miz Keen?"

"I'm fine," Lizzie said, waving. Her hands had grown cold again, but the rest of her felt heavenly warm. "I just hurt my ankle."

"And you're chilled to the bone as well," Karen admonished. She helped her around the trunk to the passenger seat, clucking over her like a hen. Lizzie soaked up her concern like a sponge, suddenly exhausted and limp with relief.

Everything would be ok. Ressler was just an idiot, not a dead idiot.

She revised her opinion when Ressler raised his head from the blankets they'd piled over him and said, "Wait. There's another m-man out there. He jumped in first; I was f-following him. We should go and see if he's still alive. We c-c-can't risk him climbing out and disappearing somewhere."

"Another man?" Peter Samson repeated. "And you were following him?"

"FBI," Ressler said, and coughed. "Badge's in my pocket."

Lizzie showed hers, glaring at him. Thankfully, the cheerful Jack Flight clapped Ressler on the blanketed shoulder and said, "You're going nowhere but to Mrs. B's, Bud. But if you're willing to wait in our van, Pete and I can see if we can spot him."

"Be careful," Lizzie said, having visions of these kind people lying eviscerated in the bushes. "He's dangerous."

"Not if he just came crawlin' out of the Silverline, he ain't," Flight grinned. He picked up a bag of heated clothes and blankets. The other man grabbed hold of a stretcher. "What direction did he drift off to?"

Lizzie pointed, and the two men quickly jogged down the path. She very much doubted that Buchanan was still alive, but Ressler was right; they should at least try to locate him.

Karen gently pushed her into the car. "Let's get you out of the snow and the wind, dear. Here, put this on your foot. Let me have a look at this." She carefully rotated Lizzie's ankle. It hurt, and she felt little things crackle and pop, but she could move all of her toes, and in the end Karen rubbed some warming jelly into her skin and lay a firm brace she covered with another sock.

They waited; Lizzie and Karen in the car, Ressler and Steve in the van. Steve came by to drop off a thermos filled with hot, sweet tea. "Drink that, love," he said, handing Lizzie a mug. "That'll warm you right up." He looked back at the van, where Ressler was just climbing out to peer into the forest, along the river. "Your partner," he said, "he don't like to sit still, much, does he?"

"No." she said, sighing.

"Men," Karen said, with a wink at her husband. "You'd better get him back inside, though. I don't like the way he keeps coughin'."

"He has a cold," Lizzie provided automatically, as Steve made his way back to the van and more or less manhandled Ressler back inside.

"Ah," Karen said. "Then he'll probably have pneumonia tomorrow. Don't look so startled, dear, and have some more tea. You can't go dipping into the Silverline this time of the year without getting sick. I'll ask Jack to bring out the antibiotics." She eyed Lizzie as she sneezed. "Maybe for you as well." She handed her a package of Kleenex.

She wouldn't have thought it possible, but half an hour after they'd left, Peter and Jack returned with a heap of blankets on their gurney. Beneath it was the unconscious figure of Harold Buchanan.

"Is he still alive?" Ressler asked, escaping from the van again.

Jack Flight's friendly face was serious. "Yes," he said, hastily manoeuvring the half-frozen man into the back of the van. "Please get out of the way—get back inside. We need to get him to the medical centre straight away. Steve, do you have any heating pads? He might lose his fingers and toes."

"Let's go," Karen said, as Steve and Jack disappeared into the van with Buchanan and Ressler and Pete sat in the front. Lizzie handed her the key, and they followed the improvised ambulance to Binchley.

Ressler and Lizzie were dropped off at the tiny town's only hotel, a guest house ran by a rotund lady with apple cheeks and a green dress and moon boots. Karen parked the SUV in front of the hotel and joined the other men to take Buchanan to the medical centre further in town. The snow was falling more heavily now, and dusk had darkened the roads.

It was, Lizzie noticed with some surprise, already a quarter past six.

Mrs. B, or Beatrice, as she introduced herself, cast one glance at Lizzie and Ressler in their borrowed sweats and blankets holding their emergency overnight bags like a couple of tramps, and descended upon them like a mother duck on her brood.

"Oh, you poor things," she tittered, making Ressler regard her with a mild kind of horror when she tried to take his bag from him. "You must be so cold! And you, limping! You'll want a hot shower, don't you? And hot chicken soup, and tea. I'll get you both a room, so you can have a nice long soak in the bath."

"That sounds amazing," Lizzie said gratefully. She was terribly tired all of a sudden.

Next to her, Ressler shivered again. "Soup sounds nice," he murmured, pulling the blankets more closely around his shoulders. He had pulled up the hood of the sweater and all that was showing of his face was his nose.

"I'll get you some," Mrs. B promised. She helped Lizzie up the stairs, shooing Ressler away when he tried to take her other arm.

_Either these people just are incredibly nice, _Lizzie thought, when she was supported into a small but lovely room with a large bed, a TV and a bathroom with a bath, _or it turns out they're all vampires and they'll slash our throats to suck our blood tonight._ She rather hoped they were just nice. She didn't have the energy to fight off vampires.

Ressler was taken to the room next door. In the winter, the hotel was usually quiet, Mrs. B entrusted to them. She left, still chatting, saying she'd be back with soup and tea in fifteen minutes.

Lizzie decided to wait for the soup to arrive before taking her bath. She was actually pretty comfortable, as far as her ankle allowed her to be comfortable. _But comfy isn't steaming with heat,_ she figured, and she didn't want to go to bed before she was glowing with warmth through and through.

When she came back, bearing hot water bottles as well as food, Beatrice pointed out to her that the bath had handholds for the elderly, "So you'll have no trouble getting out with your poor foot," she clarified. She turned on the tap while Lizzie was blowing on her soup. It was the kind of comfort food chicken soup that consisted mainly of threaded meat, so thick and filling it could turn an infant into a strong man after a spoonful.

Ressler would probably only need half a gallon before he was able to turn on his shower.

Ressler.

She snorted and almost choked on her soup. At the moment, she didn't know whether she wanted to hug him or kick him. Maybe both, at the same time. As he was probably either eating soup or avoiding the bath and standing in the shower, and her ankle wouldn't appreciate her kicking anything, much less an unyielding object, she just kept sitting there.

And when she'd finished her soup and her tea, she gingerly slid into the bathtub and remained there for another good hour, adding hot water until she felt she'd become a boiled chicken herself.

She called Cooper when she got out of the bath, only to find out that Ressler had already notified him of the situation. Wasn't he dedicated? Not only did he needlessly risk his life to catch criminals, he also thought to call in before his core temp had reached normal levels. Lizzie remained civil to her boss, but she caught herself scowling in the mirror. She didn't rightly know why she was so incredibly pissed off, but every time she thought about Ressler's white face she wanted to hit him. And kiss him. For not dying. She wanted to go to his room and scream at him, or maybe put her head on his chest and revel in the fact that he was warm and safe and not a frozen lump of flesh somewhere on the bottom of the Silverline stream.

Her ankle hurt.

She poured herself another cup of tea, crawled into bed and turned on the TV.

She was lying in bed, dressed in the sweatpants but with her own nightshirt on instead of the thick sweater, sleepily watching a Tom Cruise movie when a knock on her door started her awake.

"Come in, it's open," she called, and Ressler entered the room through a narrow slit in the door. He closed and locked it behind him on reflex. Like her, he had kept the sweats, but had shrugged into his own T-shirt. It was an older shirt, and it was a little snug around the shoulders. He wasn't wearing socks, and as he leaned against the door, she thought she saw him shiver a little.

"Hey," he said, a little hoarsely. "Just came to check on how you were doing."

"How _I_ am doing. Well, I'm doing just great." He shivered again, and she held up a corner of the comforter. "Get in."

"Don't want to impose on you."

"You're not. Get your ass into bed."

His mouth twitched. "Yes Ma'am." He crawled in next to her until he was half-sprawled, half sitting next to her, propped up against the five pillows she'd found spread around the room. Lizzie sat up so he could put an arm around her shoulders and leaned back against him. A lovely warmth radiated out from him—way too lovely.

"I think you might be feverish," she said.

"Mm."

"You really are a dick, Ressler."

He squirmed a little, then sighed and said, "I know. That was…not very smart of me."

"Not very _smart_?" she turned on him, "Jesus Christ, you basically made a suicide attempt right there in front of me!" He looked sheepish, and regarded her finger with some apprehension as it stabbed into his chest. "Do you know how much you scared me with your stupid, idiotic, stupid, stupid, _stupid_…gaaah, whatever you even thought it was?"

"Um. Badly?" His mouth quirked again. "If I'd known you were angry with me I'd have called on you by phone."

"_Angry_?" Lizzie hissed. "I almost _lost_ you to the most stupidest, moronic action you've ever taken in your life—yes, I'm furious with you!" And then, to her own mortification, she began to cry. "What if you'd died, huh?" she snarled, wiping angrily at her streaming eyes. "What if I hadn't been able to reach the town, or get you into the car, and you'd've just frozen to death right beneath that silly little plaid?" She changed position, perhaps to pummel him a little harder, but her ankle sent a stab of agony through her leg and froze her in place. "Ow."

Ressler just stared at her, mouth opened a little in consternation—or maybe because he couldn't get enough air in through his nose. Then he calmly reached for the half-empty package of tissues she'd put on the nightstand, took one out and handed it to her.

She snatched it out of his fingers and blew her nose, wiped her eyes, blew her nose again. He gave her another tissue.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. Then, with a lopsided smile, "I promise I won't do it again. If only because it was fucking uncomfortable." He looked away for a moment. "You weren't the only one who thought I was going to die. And that it would be a monumentally stupid way to go." He absentmindedly rubbed at his chest. "I thought my heart would freeze…"

Lizzie snorted. She wiped away more tears and blew her nose yet again.

"Need more tissues?" Ressler asked. She put her used one on the nightstand on her side and shook her head. The flood of bodily fluids seemed to have abated. "Good," he said, leaned over and kissed her. Slowly at first, as if he wasn't certain she'd let him. She did. His mouth was even warmer than the rest of him, and tasted vaguely of chicken soup. Chicken soup, she decided, was delicious; she opened her mouth wide, pulling him closer, and he delved into her as if he wanted to lick his tongue down her throat. He pressed his body up flush against her, pulling her down a bit, beneath the blankets, and arched into her with a small sound of urgency. So maybe he'd been pretty much terrified as well.

Lizzie clasped her fingers into his scalp and ran the other hand up beneath his shirt—Christ, he was hot; he was definitely running a fever, and sex was probably a really bad idea—but he reached for her hand and pressed it against his groin, and she obligingly kneaded him through the soft, thick fabric of his pants. He pushed into her touch with a jerk of his hips and a sharp intake of breath—which made him choke, and he averted his face to cough harshly into his elbow for a while.

"Near death experiences are such a turn-on, huh?" she asked sarcastically, pulling away a little, but he was having none of it and latched back onto her mouth, silent apart from another soft moan when she slipped her hand into his pants and traced her fingers around swollen flesh and tight skin.

Ressler yanked down her own pants and slipped two fingers between her legs. He frowned when he didn't find her dripping ready and pressed one searching finger inside of her, shuddered and pulled away when she circled a finger around the tip of his cock.

"Spread your legs," he said, voice still husky from coughing, and pulled gently at her uninjured knee.

"You don't have to," Lizzie started, but halfway that sentence decided that yes, he _did_ have to, it was high time, really, he didn't do this half as often as she really needed him to, which was five times a day, and that while he was so very, very good at it; and fever be damned, busted ankle be damned, she'd take it if he was offering. So she shut up and spread wide, and Ressler slithered down her body until his hot face was pressed between her legs. He began to cough again, smothering the sound of it in his fist, but just as she began to feel a little awkward with a violently coughing man between her legs he recovered, slid one finger inside of her and pressed his tongue against her clit.

She groaned, bit her lip in pain as she tried to open her legs wider and her ankle twinged; bit it again to keep herself from moaning out his name like a porn star when he started doing that vibrating thing he could do with his tongue.

_Why do I ever allow him to not do this when we have sex?_ she thought hazily._ I should make it a rule that we start with this, always, no exceptions. _He moved his head and she clawed her fingers into his head. "Don't you dare stop."

"Gotta…cough…again."

Well, ok, she guessed he could do that. And then he continued licking her to orgasm, and her belly and thigh muscles started to quiver like the overstretched snares of a violin, and she pleaded soundlessly, _don't cough, don't start coughing now, yes, do that, don't stop doing that_ and he didn't cough, didn't stop, and she made a high-pitched keening sound as pleasure ripped through her like some godly knife, flooding her senses and completely drowning out the pain of her ankle. He kept licking her with tiny little flicks of his tongue, making her twitch and squirm because of the overload of pleasure, unwilling to tell him to stop, but eventually growing too sensitive. She pressed her fingers against his cheeks. "Stop. Stop."

Ressler wiped his mouth, grinning. "So. Am I forgiven now?"

Lizzie scuttled back on her butt until she was again lying in the half-sprawl against the pillows and the headboard, pulled him up and forward by the strings on his pants, tugging more insistently when he tried to lie down on top of her. "No. Not by a long shot. No, up, I don't want to run to the bathroom later."

He laughed again, coughed, steadied himself on the headboard and looked down on her as he kneeled over her chest, crotch at chin-level. "You're such a romantic."

"I am a woman in pain," she shot back, and jerked the sweats down his hips. His erection almost hit her in the eye, and that made him laugh and cough again, but he stopped laughing when she caught him in her mouth and started sucking.

It was such a pity she couldn't talk with her mouth full, and make remarks like 'Not so talkative now, are you?' or 'You sure like this, don't you?'; but then again, she doubted that would add anything. He was obviously enjoying what she was doing, even though he wasn't making enough sound to show it. Maybe she should hurt him a little, that always made him more voluble, and it only served to make him come faster. She ran her hands up the backs of his thighs, over his buttocks and up the muscles of his back…and noticed that he was beginning to shiver again. It threw off the sways of his hips, made him slide in too deeply, and she pulled back, puzzled.

"G-go on," Ressler said, but his teeth were chattering and the shivers were growing into shakes, and his skin had broken out in goose bumps. His face was flushed bright red all the way down to his chest; he looked about twenty and it was all she could do not to swallow him down again, but she said, "Uh, I think you'd better get beneath the covers again."

"It's f-fine, it's just chills."

"Down boy. I'll finish you off, but get down here first." He did, and she fulfilled her promise beneath the sheets, making him come with a strangled gasp when she dug her nails into his thighs. It didn't take him very long.

He was still shivering when she surfaced, overheated and sweaty from the heat he was generating beneath the comforter, and she listened to him cough with a grimace twisting her face.

"What?" he asked hoarsely.

"I think you're really sick."

"Think of me as your p-p-personal hot w-water bottle."

"I'm beginning to think of you as a person who needs to go to the hospital."

"Don't be absurd." Ressler pulled her against his chest, spooning up against her, and kissed her neck. Somehow, he managed to turn it from a sweet, caring gesture to a way to keep her immobile. Gradually, his shivers subsided and he was right, he was wonderfully warm. So warm she hastily kicked away the hot pad she encountered at the foot of the bed—and hissed as it jarred her ankle.

"Are you sure you're all right?"

"Stop asking," he said curtly. With a sigh, she turned off the lights, reached for the remote control and turned the TV off as well, nestled back against him and went to sleep.

She was less amused when she woke up six hours later because Ressler was delirious and talking about hostage situations in his sleep.

"Well, we should have been expecting this, I guess," she sighed as she sat up, shivering as the cooler air hit her clammy back. Her shirt was damp where she had lain against him, and Ressler's side of the bed was soaked with sweat because his apparently his temperature had spiked and dropped during the night. At the moment, his skin looked dry and tight. Turning on the light, she placed a tentative hand on his forehead. Yup, he was burning up. The light didn't even wake him.

She heaved another sigh and painfully made her way out of bed and to her coat, where she retrieved her cell phone and the card Karen had given her before dropping her off at the hotel.

"Hi," she said, when someone picked up the phone with a cheerful "Binchley MC, this is Flight, how can I help you?" and was interrupted by a bout of coughing herself. "Sorry," she said, once the spasm had passed. "This is Liz Keen from the FBI. You, uh, rescued me and my partner this afternoon. And our suspect."

"Ah, yes," Jack Flight said, sounding bright and awake and not at all perturbed that she had called him awake at five o' clock in the morning. "What can I do for ya?"

"Sorry to call you this early, but my partner has a pretty high fever and Karen told me to call you if that happened. He'll probably be all right, but…"

"No, no," Jack said affably, "She told you to call me if anything happened, and you did, and that's perfectly fine. Is your partner conscious?"

She sank down on the chair she'd used to hang up her clothes and shook her head. "I didn't wake him. He's talking in his sleep; I think he's hallucinating."

"Try to wake him up and see if he's responsive," Jack suggested. "I'll be there in ten minutes."

"Should I wake up our landlady?"

"Mrs. B?" Jack said, "Nah, she'll wake up when I ring the bell. All she has to do is let me in, then she can go back to sleep again."

Lizzie apologized again for the badly timed call, but Jack assured her it was no trouble, hung up and left her to deal with Ressler.

"You're a dick," she told him, then jumped as he replied, "And you are calling other men behind my back."

"Jesus! I thought you were asleep."

He sat up, smirking, but then began to cough, long and hard, and sank bank into the pillows with a gasped-out oath.

"That doesn't sound good," Lizzie said superfluously. "You know, that man I was talking to, he's a doctor."

"If it's the same guy we met this afternoon, he isn't," Ressler rasped. He scowled at her. "I don't need a doctor."

"You have a raging fever and you sound like a barking dog."

He rolled his eyes. "I have the _flu_. Jumping into the freezing water probably didn't help it much. That doesn't mean you need to call people to stand around my bed and dose me."

"Technically," Lizzie argued, "it's _my_ bed, and no one has dosed you with anything yet." She shivered, took off the clammy shirt and shrugged into the sweater again. Locating the discarded sweatpants, she donned those as well and then sat back on the chair. She sniffled. To her sadness, her own cold had matured into the wet-eyed snot-fest she'd hoped to avoid. Her ankle hurt. She dragged the chair a little closer to the bed so she could rest her leg on the edge.

She felt Ressler's eyes upon her and glared at him, but he was looking almost contrite, and it wasn't his fault she was feeling so godawful. Even if her ankle _was_ his fault, and that wonderful barking cough of his as well.

"I'm sorry you got hurt," he said, touching her toes with his fingers. Because he never apologized for many of the things she thought he should apologize for to her, it was almost like hearing a halleluiah.

_Now I KNOW he's ill, _she thought, smiling faintly. "That's ok. I get to sic the paramedics on you now."

"I didn't know you were so vindictive." He coughed again.

"A woman scorned," she said, then trailed off.

They fell silent. Lizzie's annoyance flared up again when there was a knock at the door and she remembered that Ressler had locked it behind him, so that she had to get up know to open it for Flight. The young man's grin, however, was so infectious she couldn't stay grumpy for long. He only looked slightly more rumpled than in the afternoon despite the ungodly hour and shook her hand enthusiastically as he came in.

"Miz Keen. Mister Partner, wait, what was it again? I'm glad to see you're awake." He beamed at Ressler, who wilted a little in that peppy glow.

"Ressler," he said, "Don," and looked pleadingly at Lizzie, but she was still feeling vengeful and sat back down on her chair with her leg up.

"Feeling a bit under the weather?" the young man asked. He put his bag down next to the bed and got out a thermometer.

Ressler pressed his back deeper into the clammy sheets, but Flight indicated he should open his mouth and he accepted the thermometer without further protests.

"Let me have a look-see at your chest," Flight went on, liberating a stethoscope. "Shirt up, please." He placed the diaphragm against Ressler's chest and made him take deep breaths, which was not very successful, as that made him cough like a madman and almost choke on the thermometer. "Well then, that's nice and clear," Flight said, smiling beatifically. He pulled Ressler's shirt up again. "Looks like a sweet little case of pneumonia, nothing life-threatening. I'll have that, please," he continued, plucking the thermometer out of Ressler's mouth and regarding it with the same zen expression. He whistled. "That's high, though. Let me give you something for that." He got out two jars of pills and peeled away two smaller plastic containers from a stack and counted out eight pills into the first container. "This is doxycycline. Take one now, and one each day for a week. And here's some paracetamol for the fever. I'll get you a glass of water, you should take two right now."

Ressler muttered something about the flu and no need for antibiotics, but Flight simply gave him the glass and the pills and said, "If you had a virus, it probably opened up the way for the bacteria—especially since you went swimming this afternoon." He whipped out a paper document and said, "Sign here and here for your insurance."

His infinitely positive gaze shifted to Lizzie. "How is your ankle?"

"Painful," she said, "But I'll live." She coughed and blew her nose.

"Cold? You didn't get wet, too, did you?" Flight asked.

She shook her head, miserably. "No. Well, a little. But it's just a cold."

"I have something for that as well," Flight said, and dived into his bag as if he were Mary Poppins. He came out with a strip of large purple pills and took out two. "No," he pressed, when Lizzie opened her mouth to tell him she didn't need any medication, "Just take one. And the next one tomorrow. This one's on the house. It's vile stuff, I mean, really strong, they use it on cows, but it's GOOD. You shouldn't use it too often, but it just makes any cold, any flu, anything focussing around the sinuses DISAPPEAR."

"If they use it on cows, maybe it shouldn't be taken by humans," Ressler said doubtfully.

Lizzie, feeling contrary, swallowed one of the pills with a bit of water.

Flight grinned. "Come and find me if it hasn't worked tomorrow," he said, closing his bag. "I could say 'shoot me if they don't work', but hey, that'd be weird, wouldn't it?" He laughed.

"What about our suspect?" Ressler asked, because he couldn't help being obsessed with his work. "How's he doing?"

"Much the same as you," Flight said. "Only worse. I'm still hoping we can save his fingers. Developed a princess of an infected lung and a beautiful fever, and coughed himself to sleep—that's why I wasn't surprised Miz Keen called me to say you were doing poorly yourself. Well, that should sort itself out soon enough, now! All the best, no, don't bother, I'll let myself out. Good morning!"

He left, and Ressler looked at Lizzie and shivered. "That man terrifies me," he confessed.

Lizzie laughed. "I rather like him."

Ressler nodded sagely. "I rather thought you would." He coughed, plucking at his damp tee with distaste.

Lizzie held out her hand. "Take it off. You're better off without it."

The brief exposure to slightly cooler air on his bare skin set off another bout of shivering, but ten minutes later he was fast asleep again. Lizzie briefly wondered if she should go and sleep in Ressler's bed, but walking all the way there seemed like too much trouble, so she curled up on her dry part of the bed instead. To her own amazement she didn't wake up until the sun was shining brightly through a gap in the curtains.

Ressler and Lizzie staid in Binchley for another three days. Ressler did so in bed, coughing his lungs out and growing increasingly more disgusted with chicken soup; Lizzie feeling pretty good and surprisingly healthy after the miraculous purple pills. She spent most of the day in the common room of the hotel, her leg propped up on a chair, talking to Beatrice. The internet was out, a broken cable somewhere, Beatrice thought. It was snowing heavily.

Buchanan was still in the hospital. They'd been forced to amputate three fingers and two toes, and it was still very much uncertain whether he'd survived his stay in the water with his mind intact. Lizzie couldn't help thinking he got what was coming to him.

By the end of the third day, Ressler's fever had gone down so much only a very burly man or a very strong sedative could keep him in bed, and he insisted they head back the following morning.

"I can't drive yet," Lizzie said, with a wave at her sore ankle.

"I can," he said. "And Buchanan's ready for transport as well."

Buchanan wasn't doing so well, but he could be unwell in the back of a well-warmed car in cuffs as well as he could in bed.

And so they departed just after first light on the forth day. Buchanan was bundled up in the back, his hands cuffed to the door. Flight had given him something that would make him sleep for at least eight hours, more than enough to get back to Quantico. Ressler sat behind the wheel, cheeks slightly flushed with fever but mouth set with determination, and smoothly drove through the snow. He really was better at driving on slippery roads than Liz, she had to admit.

Lizzie rode shotgun, and stared out of the window. It was a beautiful day, the first clear day in almost a week, and the sun glittered on the Silverline stream below.

Ressler coughed.

Lizzie reached into her pocket. "Cough drop?" she asked pleasantly.


End file.
